Pennsylvania Playhouse presents Sondheim's 'Company'

"Nowadays it's fine to be 35 and unmarried, but in the 1970s if you were not married, you faced a lot of pressure from your friends," says Will Windsor Erwin, who is directing the Pennsylvania Playhouse production of "Company," Stephen Sondheim's musical about a commitment-phobic bachelor, opening Friday.

"Bobby faces a stigma and pressure. His friends are worried that he hasn't found anyone yet. The girls he dates worry that he might be gay. And he's worried that he might have let the right girl get away," says Erwin.

"Company" originally was written by George Furth as a vignette of scenes featuring married and unmarried couples. After he began his collaboration with Sondheim, the story evolved into a fuller treatment. Set in New York City in the early 1970s, it focuses on bachelor Bobby and his interactions with his friends, most of whom are married, or soon-to-be, and the women he dates. Produced and directed by Hal Prince, the show opened on Broadway in 1970 and won seven Tony awards.

"That was an amazing feat because 'Company' is not a feel-good musical, rather, it's a musical that makes one feel," Erwin says. "This is also not a traditional musical. In traditional plays and musicals, there is a start, middle and end, but to me, 'Company' is more like a memory play as it seems to journey back and forth through time within Bobby's mind."

"This is a show about regret and being grateful," Erwin says. "The problem is having the audience identify with the show and Robert. To make it work, it has to be set in the 1970s. The furniture and the set are all period. The color palette is all blues, black and chrome furniture. The costumes are all soft and muted colors — roses tangerines, canary yellow and lime green for the women."

Erwin says Sondheim has "a brilliant way of creating tension. The show opens with 'Robert Bobby Bobby Baby.' These first two notes resemble the ding-dong sound of the door bell, all the while pressuring Bobby to open the door."

Erwin says among his favorite songs are "Sorry/Grateful" and "The Little Things We Do Together.''

Erwin says he was not surprised that he had such a huge response at his auditions. " 'Company' is a show that many performers love but is rarely produced. I can see why so many came out. I mean, it's Sondheim, if I wasn't directing, I'd audition in a heartbeat!"

Working with Erwin are music director Lucille Kincaid and choreographer Gwen Swanson Vigorito. Erwin worked with Vigorito on last year's "Thoroughly Modern Millie."

William Mutimer, assistant professor of communication/theater at Northampton Community College, likes to aim high in his choice of plays at NCC. Certainly Tony Kushner's 1993 Pulitzer Prize winner, "Angels in America," is considered by many to be one of the most sensational and epic productions of the early 1990s.

Described as a "gay fantasia on national themes," it is set in 1985. The Reagans are in the White House and Death swings the scythe of AIDS on an unsuspecting world. For many, the play's open discussion of AIDS was an introduction to a subject that soon would become an urban plague, destroying the gay community, creating a devastating effect on the artistic world of New York and a hysterical response from the straight world.

The play focuses on Manhattanite Prior Walter, who has just told Louis, his lover of four years, that he's ill. As disease and loneliness ravage Prior, guilt invades Louis and we meet more and more people affected by this new disease.

"Even though the plague that is AIDS is not in the forefront of our minds today, it still very much exists," Mutimer says. "The younger generation does not remember the fear and loss experienced in the '80s. You can also see a great difference in the sexual climate with unsafe and unprotected sex creeping back into the society. Young people today do not have the fear that was very prevalent when 'Angels' first hit the theater scene. Many do not even know that there was a disease or that it still exists."

Mutimer is presenting Part 1 of the play, "The Millennium Approaches," and has an interracial cast. ""Angels" is about the human experience of living in America, the melting pot of the world. Without giving too much away I will say that Prior's bloodline is not as pure as he may think, and our Angel is magnificent in all her slory.

Mutimer stresses that this play is an important part of 20th-century American theater.

"Kushner's voice is strong and clear in 'Angels,'" he says. "With the success of his script for the movie 'Lincoln,' the play is a chance to see this great American playwright and prove that after 20 years he still has an amazing gift for communication."